Tuesday, August 31, 2010

At least eight people died early today after an attack with gasoline bombs caused a fire in a crowded bar in the Mexican resort city of Cancún, México.

According to the Diario de Yucatan (in Spanish), citing preliminary reports of Justice Attorney of the Mexican State of Quintana Roo, Francisco Alor Quesada, the attackers arrived this morning in two black luxury cars and threw the bombs Molotov cocktails into the Castillo del Mar in Cancun causing a fire. Although most customers and employees managed to get out, six female workers and two male customers were killed because of severe burns.

The reasons for the attack have not been established and authorities do not have enough information to identify those responsible. The Bar Castillo del Mar is away from the tourist hotel zone and the bar owners had often received extortion threats and proposals for “protection” that had not been accepted.

Yucatán, the northern part of the state of Quintana Roo, where the Mexican Caribbean resort of Cancún is located, has been an area disputed for months by several rival gangs among which are members of “Los Zetas” and “El Cartel del Golfo".

Last week, members of “Los Zetas” gunned down 72 illegal immigrants after they refused to pay extortion money, according to one of the survivors.

Seven major groups of drug traffickers have been identified as fighting for control of drug market traffic from Mexico into the United States. The worst of the war between the gangs has been going on since the start of the government of President Felipe Calderón in 2006 and has left over 28,000 dead in bombings, assassinations and kidnappings.

The Federal Government assault on the State of Arizona continues with a lawsuit against the Maricopa County Community College District alleging discrimination against non-citizens. To those unfamiliar with Arizona, Phoenix is in Maricopa County and also the home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Keeping pressure on Arizona over its immigration policies, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit Monday against a local community college system alleging that it discriminated against non-citizens by making them fill out additional paperwork during the hiring process.

The department filed suit against the Maricopa County Community College District, claiming its investigation revealed the colleges were requiring newly hired non-citizen workers to provide more authorization documents than required by law. The department claimed it counted at least 247 cases in which non-citizens were required to hand in more paperwork than their U.S. citizen counterparts.

Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in a written statement that the community college system was demonstrating a "pattern or practice of discrimination" with the policy.

A college official declined to comment when reached by FoxNews.com, citing the pending litigation.

The suit comes after the Justice Department went to court to battle the state of Arizona's immigration law that required local law enforcement officers to check suspects for their immigration status. A federal judge blocked the state from implementing key provisions of that policy.

The latest suit was filed within the department's own Executive Office for Immigration Review.

According to the Justice Department, the Immigration and Nationality Act requires employers to treat authorized non-citizen workers the same as U.S. citizens during the hiring process.

Mexico is collapsing. 3200 Federales, 10%, have been fired this year. Fired for corruption, failing to do their jobs, etc. The good news is that they are barred from taking jobs in other government security forces at any level.

Mexico's federal police agency has fired nearly 10 percent of its force this year for failing checks designed to detect possible corruption, a major obstacle in the country's battle against increasingly brutal drug gangs.

Mexico's approximately 35,000 federal police are required to undergo periodic lie detector, psychological and drug examinations, and the government routinely investigates their finances and personal life.

Federal Police Commissioner Facundo Rosas said 3,200 officers have been dismissed this year for failing to meet the agency's standards. He did not give more details.

The fired agents are barred from taking jobs in any other security force — a recurring problem that Mexican governments have vowed to solve for many years. Another 1,020 federal police are facing unspecified disciplinary measures.

Police corruption at all levels is widespread in Mexico. Police are often found to have been involved in cartel attacks, including the assassination two weeks ago of a mayor who had disciplined municipal officers in his northern town. Investigators say local officers aligned with the Zetas drug gang killed the mayor in retaliation.

...

On Sunday, gunmen killed the mayor of Hidalgo, a town near where the migrants were slain. Two weeks earlier, the mayor of another northeastern town, Santiago, was assassinated, allegedly by police tied to the Zetas.

In June, cartel gunmen assassinated the leading candidate for governor of Tamaulipas, Rodolfo Torre Cantu, less than a week before state and local elections.

CNN reports that of the 3200 fired, 465 have been charged with crimes. Another 1020 officers, in addition to the 3200 fired, face disciplinary proceedings for failing confidence exams.

The purpose of this letter is express my concern and indignation to you about the "Universal Periodic Review" report ("Report") submitted on August 20, 2010, by the United States Department of State to the United High Commissioner for Human Rights. The State Department describes the Report as a "partial snapshot of the current human rights situation in the United States, including some of the areas where problems persist in our society." In particular, I am protesting the inclusion of Paragraph 95 of the report that highlights Arizona's recently enacted immigration laws and asking that you amend the Report to remove it.

Simply put, it is downright offensive that the U.S. State Department included the State of Arizona and S.B. 1070 in a report to the United Nations Council on Human Rights, whose members include such renowned human rights "champions" as Cuba and Libya. Apparently, the federal government is trying to make an international human rights case out of S.B. 1070 on the heels of already filing a federal court case against the State of Arizona. The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a State of the United States to "Review" by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional. Human rights as guaranteed by the United States and Arizona Constitutions are expressly protected by S.B. 1070 and defended vigorously by my Administration. In fact, the Department of Justice has correctly not included these so-called "human rights" issues in the current litigation against the State of Arizona.

Furthermore, it is hypocritical for the State Department to include S.B 1070 in the Report, while taking credit for the "sophistication and breadth of (the United States') anti-=trafficking efforts" in Paragraph 99 of the Report. The federal government's failure to secure the entire border has resulted in life-and-death consequences. The flow of illegal immigrant trafficking to a large degree across the harsh Arizona desert is a result of the federal policy to secure the border in San Diego and El Paso and leave the Tucson (Arizona) Sector less secured. For example, this federal policy has resulted in the deaths of untold numbers of illegal immigrants - 170 bodies found in the desert so far this year according to the Pima County (Arizona) Medical Examiner. And this does not include the kidnappings and other acts of violence many times associated with illegal immigrant trafficking. Moreover, the Obama Administration has stated that it's official policy to not enforce major portions of our federal immigration laws, which encourages only more illegal immigration. If the federal government secured the entire border and enforced our immigration laws, these human rights problems would not be occurring for citizens, legal residents and illegal immigrants.

I understand that the next step is for the Report to be reviewed by some members of the United Nations Human Rights Council later this year. I again respectfully request that you amend the Report to remove Paragraph 95 relating to the State of Arizona and S.B. 1070. If you choose not to do so, the State of Arizona will monitor the proceedings and assert any rights it has in this process. Be assured that the State of Arizona will fight any attempt by the U.S. Department of State and the United Nations to interfere with the duly enacted laws of the State of Arizona in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.

In closing, I encourage the State Department to compare the immigration laws and records of any United Nations Human Rights Council member commenting on S.B 1070 in this process to those of the United States and then publish that comparison. I am confident that the generous immigration tradition of the United States and Arizona will win in any comparison.

Please see the link above for the footnotes, references, salutations, etc.

The largest newspaper in the state of Arizona has on it's online front page today an article entitled Mexico celebrates sounds of daily life. Seriously, that's front page news when Mexico is imploding thanks to the violence of the drug cartels? Google "Mexico gun fire". The Arizona Republic (the online home of which is AZCentral) is a constant advocate for open borders, amnesty, and the illegal alien "human right" of border crossing with impunity. It is also a statewide disgrace and in financial trouble. It is nothing more than a propaganda tool for communists, marxists, and other assorted leftists.

I cancelled my subscription to this rag ages ago. The continued to phone me and mail me for years begging me to restore my subscription. They didn't stop until I finally told them that I would never even consider it since it would be supporting propaganda for hideous ideologies. Of course, I had to explain what those big words meant.

Damn shame it is. Especially when one remembers that the Arizona Republic was originally a voice of traditional American Conservatism called The Arizona Republican.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

I am posting this in it's entirety with a minimum of introduction since it needs nothing further from me. This is the reality in the border areas. The violence is here. And it will only get worse. Please read the whole thing.

At approximately 1:00a.m., the morning of August 26, 2010, three vehicles loaded with dope and driven by Mexican Narco Terrorists, broke through the International Boundary Fence on the east side of Douglas, AZ. Unfortunately for them they were quickly spotted and subsequently chased by several carloads of authorities, both federal and local. The chase started on what is locally known as the Geronimo Trail, an extension of 15th Ave. Due to the close proximity to the town, the chase almost immediately found itself within Douglas city limits. The outlaws in their haste to get away tried every trick to evade the law officers. The chase finally reached speeds of 80 miles an hour through residential as well as business districts, the outlaws driving with no headlights. Perhaps because of the time of night only a few law enforcement vehicles were involved. They were not able to apprehend the outlaws, but they did get them turned around and eventually chased them back through the very same hole they had created when entering the United States, thereby, escaping south back into Mexico.

On July 6, 2010, I attended a Douglas City Council Meeting at City Hall. It was a special meeting called by Mayor Mike Gomez to try for a second time to pass a resolution stating that the U.S.–Mexican Border had reached a point where it was out of control and had become lawless and therefore dangerous to the citizens of Douglas and the surrounding area. This resolution was not a statue or law with subsequent penalties or boundaries; it was merely a resolution, or statement; a sort of cry out of the wilderness so to speak declaring the need for some assistance from the federal and/or state level to shut down illegal outlaw activity on the Mexican Border. The Arizona League of Cities had encouraged Mayor Mike Gomez to get this passed and had promised unanimous support. They planned to send it on to Washington D. C., with every city in Arizona signing along with Douglas. The resolution, it was hoped, would pull some weight and get the attention of the powers that be at the national level. In what one television reporter called “The most bizarre meeting I have ever attended,” the city council turned down the resolution.

The meeting was packed out with a standing room only crowd that was extremely polarized to say the least. Many ranchers from the surrounding ranching community were there who, along with many residents within the city limits, were in support of the resolution. Also in attendance were some open border advocates, who claimed to stand for civil rights (they looked like professional protesters to me). The meeting was heated by arguments both pro and con about the resolution. One council person spoke stating that she couldn’t vote yes on the resolution because it would be admitting Douglas was a lawless place and she felt safe there and it would be sending the wrong message. Another council person stated he couldn’t vote yes because his constituents wouldn’t approve.

Many local ranchers pleaded for the passage of the resolution reminding the council of the murder of Rob Krentz and a multitude of other incidents where people had been molested by illegal aliens. Upon hearing these pleas for help a council person replied “You people have got some problems.” And then repeating himself, “You people have got some problems,” emphasizing “you” so everyone present would observe a deliberate disconnect between him and anyone advocating the resolution. Even through nothing about the resolution would be legally binding, four council members stated that in their opinion the border was not out of control and passing it would be sending the wrong message to the outside world. As far as they were concerned the status quo was just fine. The resolution was voted down with four council members voting no, and one council member, along with the Mayor, voting yes. They had spoken; Douglas was just a nice little border town, peaceful and quiet, and there was no need to get in an uproar about the outlaw activity on the border.

The Arizona Rancher

While all this goes on, it is business as usual for the outlaw trade on the Mexican line. Due to the media attention of Rob Krentz’s murder the Border Patrol has swamped the San Bernardino Valley east of Douglas with agents, so the illegal alien traffic is down substantially in that area, but there is still a considerable amount of dope filtering through. To the west, though, it is a different story. In the area around Naco and the Huachuca Mountains the traffic is going strong. You can go to youtube and watch numerous videos of aliens hiking through these areas. The Sasabe area, including the Baboquivari Mountains southwest of Tucson, is particularly hot right now. But perhaps the hottest spot of all is the Tohono O’odham Reservation and Organ Pipe National Monument near Ajo and Sells, AZ where dope and contraband flow like a river.

Upon pondering these things I would like to ask a few questions of our elected officials and other people. I would like to know if the members of the Douglas City Council still feel safe in Douglas, AZ?

I wonder how many times Mexican outlaws would have to bust through the border fence and drive around Douglas 80 miles an hour with headlights off in the middle of the night before these council members would get concerned? Perhaps the outlaws know where they live, and out of respect they deliberately avoid their neighborhoods while on their 80 mile an hour sojourn through town? If they can’t vote yes on the resolution because it would go against their constituent’s wishes, I would like to know just who their constituents are and how they make a living? Who would oppose a plea for assistance to establish law and order? I wonder if the councilman who purposefully established the disconnect between himself and anyone who was having problems, thinks perhaps there is a problem now? I suppose this recent high speed chase through residential areas of Douglas wouldn’t warrant his concern. I wonder how many high speed chases it would take to get his attention? Perhaps a few innocent bystanders being killed by the outlaw’s speeding car would rattle his chain. I wonder if Janet Napolitano still thinks the border is safer than ever. I suppose she’s under strict orders to never say “uncle” even though every day another story emerges from somewhere between Brownsville and San Diego of another Narco Terrorist invasion, or another murder or kidnapping, and tons of contraband being seized, all at the expense of the tax paying, law abiding American citizens.

But that leads to another question. How have law abiding American citizens suddenly become the enemy in this nation? We recently had to endure the scourging of Felipe Calderon, speaking from our own capitol building at the invitation of Barack Obama, and now there is talk that Obama is dragging us before the United Nations so they can reprimand us for such violations as defending our border.

Sheriffs Larry Dever and Paul Babeau are neither members of the AZ State Legislature or the United States Senate or House of Representatives. They have no law making responsibility or power. Their purpose is to enforce the laws of the land, written by the politicians that we elect. Because they are merely doing their job they are now being sued by members of Obama’s radical left. A lawsuit is senseless and will do nothing but deplete their resources and energy, precious commodities they need to accomplish a duty they took a solemn pledge to fulfill when they took office. Why have they become the enemy?

This leads to more questions. How did we get here? Larry Devers, Paul Babeau, and Jan Brewer all took oaths pledging to fulfill the duties of their office and to enforce the laws of the land. SB1070 is merely a reflection of Federal law passed by elected officials. Why are they being crucified for trying to establish some sort of order in the midst of chaos? Are there people who just don’t get it? Is there some sort of disconnect here, some sort of breakdown in the natural order of things? It seems like we suffer from a lack of direction, a loss of knowing the truth, we’ve shifted off of the foundations we built upon, and I believe the assault flows from the top downward.

One wonders who Barack Obama’s constituents are. Are they the citizens of Arizona and Texas? Or are they the citizens of a larger world? One wonders where his loyalties lay. Perhaps the United States isn’t big enough for him?

Obama loves to use tax payer’s money to host parties for Bush bashers like Paul McCartney. Obama can shuck and jive with the best of them on the Ellen Degeneres and Oprah shows. He has straight white teeth and a good looking wife, but these are not the ingredients of a statesman. Campaign speeches and signs proclaiming change you can believe in aren’t worth much when the ship needs a pilot to guide it through troubled waters.

That leads to another question. I wonder how seriously Barack Obama took his oath of office. Was he pledging allegiance to the Constitution of the United States or the Bylaws of the United Nations? I wonder who his heroes are, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, or Samir Shabaz? It seems he’s more comfortable around Hugo Chavez and Felipe Calderon than he is Jan Brewer or Dick Chaney. After all, they are merely U.S. citizens.

So I asked myself, who are my heroes? At the top of my list are George Washington and Winston Churchhill. I always root for the underdog, so I added to my list: Larry Dever, Paul Bebeau, Joe Arpaio, and Jan Brewer. I realize that I’m just a dumb cowhand and I don’t understand the intricacies of international politics and high-minded, political innuendo, (like the intellectually stimulating writings of Karl Marx, or the mastery of political skill by individuals like Adolph Hitler) but for an old cowboy like myself there’s just something appealing about someone who will get a bull by the juevos and hold on while they are getting the living crap stomped out of them.

Mexican First Lady Margarita Zavala, wife of Mexican President Filipe Calderon, both of primarily European descent encourages illegal immigration. I expect she is trying to rid her country of it's browner citizens who are primarily of indian descent, actually encourages migration. Yes, I just called her a racist.

Margarita Zavala, wife of the President of Mexico, spoke at the World Youth Conference and said that migration must be seen as an opportunity for Mexico’s youth and not as a threat; also, that fear must be set aside in order to search for life’s opportunity in other countries. She added that migration represents a chance for growth, and stated: “I believe in migration not only as a reality but as an element that promotes the growth of the peoples. Unfortunately, it’s seen as a threat, and due to that youths are its main victims. I believe that what we have to do is to stop fearing migration, because doing so is to fear reality.” Further, that she was surprised about the technological advancements that have occurred on a world level, and that the same may not have happened in regard to the growth of human rights: “It’s surprising that merchandise goes from one place to another, that technology unites us and, nevertheless, there are fences and limits, especially cultural ones, for the movement of persons.”

At least one member of the National Guard begins the border mission on Monday. Of course, that doesn't include actually interdicting illegal aliens. No, instead their mission appears to be as "spotters".

The first (only one? - Kirls) of 532 National Guard troops are set to begin their mission in the southern Arizona desert on Monday under President Barack Obama's plan to beef up U.S.-Mexico border security, although they won't have any law enforcement authority.

Authorities declined to say how many troops would start Monday, but that waves of them will be deploying every Monday until all 532 are expected to be on the Arizona border by the end of September.

Arizona National Guard spokesman Lt. Valentine Castillo says the troops will be "extra eyes and ears" for U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

He says the troops will have guns for self-defense, but they will not have the authority to arrest anyone themselves; if they spot illegal immigrants, they must report them to the Border Patrol.

Sheriff Babeu (pronounced "bab-you") of Pinal County Arizona is right on so many things and has done so much good in his life. I can't figure why he endorsed McCain! Surely he noticed that McCain wrote ht 2007 amnesty bill. Anyway, here is Sheriff Babeu saying all the right stuff yet again.

Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, Ariz., says it is “an outrage” the Obama administration has stopped building the double-fencing needed to assist the Border Patrol in securing the U.S.-Mexico border and says it is time for the United States to begin fighting illegal immigration and drug smuggling directly at the border instead of within the country where it harms American citizens and communities.

By the time Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, according to the Justice Department, only 108 miles of the 262-mile-long Arizona portion of the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border had been fenced.

“We shouldn’t be fighting this battle in the interior. We should be fighting it directly on our international border,” Babeu said in an "Online With Terry Jeffrey" interview. “And it’s an outrage that our own federal government stopped building the fence.”

Babeu, whose southern Arizona county sits astride major drug-and-alien-smuggling routes running north from Mexico, has joined with Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County, Ariz., and Arizona’s two U.S. senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, to push a 10-point plan for securing the border. The plan includes, among other provisions, completing the necessary border fencing, deploying 3,000 National Guard troops to cover just the Arizona stretch of the border, and deploying significantly more surveillance aircraft than are currently used to patrol the border.

Babeu, who is also a major in the Army National Guard and who did a tour in Iraq, formerly commanded Task Force Yuma, a deployment of 700 Army and Air Force National Guard troops who worked with the Border Patrol to secure one segment of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.

CNSNews.com asked Babeu about a 2009 report from the National Drug Intelligence Center, an element of the Obama Justice Department, that described the Arizona border as “underprotected,” “especially conducive to large-scale drug smuggling,” and a place where “few barriers exist … to impede drug traffickers, chiefly Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations], from smuggling illigicit drug shipments into the United States from Mexico.”

“That sounds pretty accurate to me,” Babeu said. “I just wish that the top leaders would read it and take heed, because it doesn’t match up not only with their policy, it doesn’t match up with, in fact, their actions and enforcement policies. Because we live here, we understand this better than anybody. And this in fact is going on.”

Babeu said he is confident that the border can be secured, but argued the Obama administration’s decisions not to build the border fence and to follow a catch-and-release policy with illegal aliens have been counter-productive. Recent steps the administration has taken regarding the border, including the deployment of 520 National Guard troops in Arizona, Babeu indicated, were insufficient and amounted to ineffective pre-election posturing.

“Build the double-barrier fence and complete it,” said Babeu. “I’m a combat engineer in the Army, that’s part of my job. I have had 20 years now. I don’t speak for the Army, but I was down in Yuma. I was a tactical commander for 400 to 700 active duty soldiers and airmen, and we secured that border, supporting our heroes in the Border Patrol. Ninety-five percent reduction in illegal entries. And to this date, there’s not one soldier there, and why is that? It’s because we completed the double-barrier fence and they have full enforcement. No more catch-and-release. But catch-and-release is alive and well throughout the rest of the state. And the fence isn’t built. Obama stopped the construction. So it’s all this political talk. They’re deploying only 520 soldiers to Arizona when we need 3,000 armed soldiers. And they’re deploying right before the November election. So you don’t have to be a detective to figure this one out.’

President George W. Bush signed the “Secure Fence Act” in October 26, 2006. This law specifically directed that “the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide for least 2 layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors” along 700 miles of the 2000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.

As of this April, according to the Government Accountability Office, the government had only constructed 347 miles of what it calls “pedestrian fencing.” This fencing, most of which is single-layered, “is designed to prevent people on foot from crossing the border,” according to the GAO. Currently, the administration plans to build a total of 367 miles of such pedestrian fencing.

Additionally, as of April, the government had built 299 miles of what it calls “vehicle fencing” along the border. This fencing, according to the GAO, “consists of physical barriers meant to stop the entry of vehicles.” It often is made of steel beams embedded in ground. This type of fencing is not intended to stop pedestrians.

“As of April 2010,” the GAO reported, “CBP [Customs and Border Protection] had completed 646 of the 652 miles of fencing it committed to deploy along the southwest border. CBP plans to have the remaining 6 miles of this baseline completed by December 2010, pending resolution of litigation for portions of property along the border. Also, CBP plans to construct an additional 14 miles of pedestrian fencing in the Rio Grande Valley Sector by September 2010.” The 652 miles of total fencing now slated to be built, includes only 367 miles of "pedestrian fencing."

The 700 miles of double-layered reinforced fencing with roads and lighting that was envisioned by the Secure Fence Act has not been built.

The Supreme Court ruled ages ago that any child present in the United States, legally or not, is entitled (Good God how I hate that concept!) to an education in American public schools. Note that does not depend on citizenship so even Americans living outside American are not entitled to an American pulic education. But, the school superintendent in Ajo, AZ has gone too far and not only enrolls schools who live in Mexico, but sends school buses to pick them up right at the border where they cross each morning. What I want to know is, how are these children getting across the border? Are you telling me that our Border Patrol is so neutered that they can't even stop school children who cross back and forth every week day for 9 months of every year???

AZ State School Superintendent sent his staff down there and recorded the kids coming across and getting on the bus provided by the Ajo School Superintendent. What more evidence is needed here??

Fortuantely, this will all change Monday when they have to prove actual residence in Arizona.

For years, students living in Mexico crossed the border at Lukeville, boarded a bus and attended the tiny Ajo Unified School District.

But that will change Monday, when classes begin there in southwestern Arizona.

Following a crackdown by Arizona schools chief Tom Horne, students won't be allowed to board the bus unless their parents or guardians prove the children live in the district's boundaries and not in Mexico.

The school district has asked Pima County Schools, which provides the transportation, to confirm the residency of those living in "unorganized territories" and to give those students certificates. Ricardo Hernandez, chief financial officer for Pima County Schools, said a certificate is required to board the bus and that 48 have been issued.

Certificates were not required last year, when 86 students were on the roughly 38-mile trip from Lukeville to Ajo.

Horne, who is running for attorney general in Tuesday's primary election, had his office launch an investigation in 2004 after The Arizona Republic and CNN reported on the matter. The Arizona Department of Education began a new probe last year following new complaints.

Horne's office in May announced it was seeking $1.2 million from the Ajo Unified School District for allegedly using state funds to educate 105 students from Mexico since 2007.

Robert Dooley, Ajo schools superintendent, said the state investigation was flawed and that the district has found at least 60 of the students in question were legal residents.

Dooley said the district has been unable to prove at least 20 of the students were legal residents and that they have been removed from the school's enrollment records.

He said the district still is trying to determine the residency status of the other 25 students.

The controversy in Ajo coincides with the court battle between Arizona and the federal government over the state's tough illegal-immigration law.

A federal judge has put on hold key provisions of the law, which is being appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

However, the issue in Ajo isn't whether the students are in the country legally. It's where they live.

Illegal immigrants can attend Arizona public schools if they reside in the state.

But Horne said it's illegal to receive a free taxpayer-funded education if a student doesn't live in Arizona.

Dooley said his district has "raised the bar" on residency requirements and has offered to settle the case by paying the state $300,000, which likely would result in layoffs of four or five teachers.

The district laid off two teachers for the upcoming school year, and it expects to have 33 teachers for 450 to 475 students.

"For a little-bitty district, that's still a lot of money," Dooley said of the offer.

Dooley said the Department of Education rejected the district's offer and would settle for $700,000.

Horne declined to discuss the settlement negotiations with Ajo, saying that was an issue for attorneys from his office. He said that whatever the amount Ajo will pay, it will serve as a deterrent for other Arizona districts along the border that are willing to educate children from Mexico.

School districts receive state funds based on the number of students they have enrolled.

"If a school wants to do it without charging the state, that's fine with me," Horne said. "But I'm a fiduciary for the state."

PHOENIX -- The state Department of Education is calling on the Ajo Unified School District to return $1.2 million of state funding, saying the district illegally provided free education to Mexican students.

State schools Superintendent Tom Horne released audit findings that demonstrate the district illegally enrolled non-Arizona resident students at a total cost of nearly $1.2 million from fiscal years 2007, 2008 and 2009.

"The issue here is not citizenship or documentation, but residency," Horne stated. "In this case, 105 students were claiming to live in Arizona, when in fact they reside in Mexico."

Horne said children cross the border daily and take buses to the public schools in Ajo where they have been educated at the expense of Arizona taxpayers.

Horne said the auditors determined that students were claiming residency in uninhabitable trailers, vacant RV spaces and an abandoned motel in Lukeville.

"This practice must stop and I intend to ask that the district refund the money to the taxpayers," Horne said.

The district has 30 days to appeal the findings of the audit to the Arizona State Office of Administrative Hearings.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Many of us who live here near the border with Mexico have been saying for some time that the illegal alien situation has reached the crisis level. We wait and hope for some kind of benevolent and hopeful message from our President and his Administration, but get no kind words.

As I’ve said before, since Rob Krentz’s death there has been no statement from the Administration to the Krentz family. But there have been many derogatory remarks about the racist Arizona people, Governor Brewer and SB1070. The vilification coming from Washington toward the people in AZ has been astounding. I believe this is deliberate and falls into Obama’s adherence to what has become known as the “Cloward-Piven Strategy.

Put into one sentence the Cloward-Piven Strategy is forcing change through orchestrated crises. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s White House Press Secretary has been quoted saying, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The Obama Administration’s response to the ever growing Narco Terrorist problem on the southern border has been similar in strategy to his response to the problems in our economy, the BP oil spill, and the crisis in our financial institutions. Virtually every crisis Obama has faced has been with the strategy of making sure it gets bigger and better so Big Brother has to step in gaining control of every aspect of America. A key tenet in this Leftist ideology is that the middle class will be too busy and preoccupied with their lives to fight back, or for that matter even notice. I believe that the situation on the border is purposefully being ignored as much as possible until it reaches a boiling point with no solution in sight except amnesty and an open border.

Recently a group of Los Zetas, the most violent Narco Terrorist gang in Mexico, invaded U.S. soil and seized a ranch north of Laredo in Texas U.S.A. Los Zetas planned on using the ranch as a forward operation base for their smuggling activities. This story was published in Beef Magazine and can also be found on the internet. Texas law enforcement has corroborated this act of terrorism against American citizens on American soil yet nothing has been said in the main stream media or the White House press room.

Here are some facts to ponder: since December of 2006 there have been over 28,000 Narco Terrorist assassinations in Mexico alone, most of these within a few miles of the U.S. border. Mexican Cartel Narco Terrorists are killing more people than Al Quaida. Armed Mexican Narco Terrorists have been spotted within 25 miles of my house more than a dozen times in the last 2 years.

President Obama and the anti-gun lobby of the radical left like to blame the U.S. for arming the Mexican Cartels. Actually there is increasing evidence that this isn’t the case. As early as 2007 the National Drug Intelligence Center, an agency of the U.S. Justice Dept., stated in a report that the Mexican Drug Cartels had an increasing relationship with Hamas and Hezbollah, the popular front for the Liberation Of Palestine and other Middle Eastern Moslem Terrorist Organizations. The report said, “Islamic Terrorist Groups are selling Arms to Mexican Drug Trafficking Cartels and collaborating with them to distribute drugs to Europe and the Middle East. The Las Vegas Sun newspaper touched on this in an article on 8/20/2010.

There are also several articles to this effect found on the internet and yet the main stream media, in their usual style has given Obama a free pass allowing him to blame the U.S. and advance his anti-gun agenda. Common sense will tell you that the Mexican Drug Cartels with their multibillion dollar income and world-wide connections, coupled with an unlimited supply of U. S. enemies with guns to sell, have no need to rely on the U.S. for arms.

Volumes have been written about the corruption in Mexico. The culture of mordido (bribery) is deeply ingrained not only in local government but all the way to the President himself. In light of that, one has to wonder what Calderon will do with all the Aid being promised to him by Obama. Will U.S. tax dollars be filtered down from Calderon through various government agencies into the army and finally to the Cartels themselves? This idea is not as far fetched as it seems. In any case, in my opinion giving Aid to a country as corrupt and chaos ridden as Mexico is a poor investment at best. Promoting propaganda that implies a few smuggled arms going south from the U.S. into Mexico is arming the Drug Cartels is dishonest, and contradictory of government intelligence. Blaming the US. for something it really isn’t guilty of- does that sound familiar? Change through orchestrated chaos!

The country of Mexico has collapsed. I hear reports weekly of another ranch that has been seized by Drug Cartels. There have been entire towns along the Rio Grande seized. The good people being either murdered or run out and the towns turned into forward operating bases for smuggling activities. Just in the last 2 weeks I learned of a man with dual citizenship (U.S. and Mexican) who owned a large ranch and farm in Mexico. The Cartel told him to get out so he sold his ranch to them and deposited the money in a Mexican bank. Then he came north to Arizona and made a down payment on a ranch here but before escrow closed his Mexican Banker was murdered by Cartel assassins. Because of this, his money is tied up and he can not complete the purchase of the AZ ranch. He is now in limbo – no money, no ranch, no income and no where to go. I am acquainted with several people who know this man and I believe this story is true. Many wealthy families of good character have left Mexico, some to the United States, many to Europe, to escape the death and destruction that plagues their homeland. But the poor are stuck and it’s cooperate or die.

Recently Barack Obama invited Mexican President Calderon to Washington and gave him the opportunity to deride the tax paying, law abiding citizens of Arizona over the passing of SB1070 by the AZ Legislature. Imagine, President Calderon berating and insulting American citizens while his own country is collapsing in a shambles of corruption, with the good and honest people of Mexico being murdered and their property stolen by a multitude of thugs. But there President Calderon stood in Congress for all the world to see being applauded by Obama and all the Democrats present. This scene in Congress is unprecedented in American history; a sitting American President applauding the leader of a failed and corrupt foreign State while he verbally takes the whip to American citizens. Every politician who applauded should be thrown out of office. Obama’s actions of inviting Calderon, and then applauding his address to Congress was the worse betrayal of the American people in our country’s history and if treason is too harsh an accusation it is certainly looking off into that abyss.

Where do we go from here? I’m no Prophet but I think its naïve to the point of stupidity to think that the anarchy that now pervades Mexico will not become increasingly present north of the Mexican border. Indeed the entire focus of the outlaws who now rule Mexico is on the United States (considering the anarchy that has permeated Mexico, its hard for me to recognize Calderon’s so called leadership). All eyes, all guns and all the drugs are pointed north. The only thing going south is your money. If the current way we are NOT handling this problem continues things are sure to get bigger but not better.

When you couple this with Obama’s radical drift to the left and away from what should be considered right from wrong: an unconstitutional Healthcare Bill that the majority of Americans don’t want, the setting aside of $5 billion of Medicaid money for Florida Sen. Ben Nelson’s slush fund, the $20 billion compensation fund Obama forced BP to set up which will be administered by Obama cronies, a Cap and Trade Law that will stifle industry and ruin the private enterprise system that has made our nation great, Rahm Emanuel’s offer of high ranking jobs to people like Joe Sestak so he will pull out of the race with Arlen Spector, and Mr. Obama’s socialistic ideology seeking to destroy traditional America. He has ignored the constitution which has been the glue holding us together for two centuries.

But there is hope; with God all things are possible. I pray that Americans will wake up and begin to rebel (at the polling place) against this corrupt and intentionally incompetent Administration. I pray that we make our way back to a strict interpretation of our Constitution (not the revisionist interpretation of Obama, Emanuel, and Holder). I pray we realize we need to regain the basic principles of economics that Obama has abandoned. I pray we could go back to the policy of standing by our friends and allies (like Israel) rather than throw them under the bus. I pray that we seal our southern border so that Mexican outlaws can no longer come north and commit terrorist acts against American citizens. Last but not least I pray the American people would be given the ability to smell a skunk when he gets in the chicken house. God bless America.

The reporter is wrong at the end of this video when she says that the 72 murdered illegal aliens in Mexico were murdered for no gain. They were murdered becaues they refused to cooperate with the drug cartel and become paid killers and/or mules.

The state's high unemployment rate and proximity to the Mexican border is making for fertile recruiting ground, as investigators say cartel members are singling out individuals desperate for money and employment.

Capt. Kevin Zumbo, of the Illegal Immigration Prevention & Apprehension Co-op Team (IIMPACT), a multi-agency unit in the Phoenix metropolitan area focused on illegal immigration-associated crime, told MyFoxPhoenix.com that the cartels are looking for U.S. citizen who can easily blend in with society and not alert authorities.

"Whether they meet someone in a bar or restaurant, they will recruit anyone," Zumbo said. "Right now, as we speak, it's happening every day."

Recruiters for the cartels often flash large sums of money at the potential new hires who are targeted to bring drugs, guns and people to various locations along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Citizens know how to blend in," Zumbo continued. "They know if they are stopped they won’t be detained."

Zumbo told MyFoxPhoenix.com that cartels have learned that violence attracts attention from law enforcement. As a result, illegal immigrants are receiving better treatment inside drophouses. Violence across the border, however, has not decreased.

Seventy-two men and women -- immigrants from South and Central America -- were found dead at a ranch 100 miles from the U.S. border just last week. Investigators believe the Zetas drug cartel was responsible for the killings.

"This is an escalation of the violence," Zumbo said. "It's getting more and more violent in Mexico. It should be a wake-up call to the Mexican government."

Friday, August 27, 2010

I have heard repeatedly in local news reports that voter turnout in AZ was about 25%. 501,054 people voted in the Republican Primary this week. 281, 418 of them cast a vote for John McCain. If 501, 054 was 25% of those who could have voted in the Republican Primary, then 2,004,216 people could have voted. The 281, 418 who voted for McCain represent 14% of the people who could have voted. And that is an even smaller percentage of the people who could have registered and voted. So, once again, a very small minority saddles us with McCain.

It seems that the Mexican Drug Cartel isn't happy about the reporting of a San Fernando television station which has been investigating the murder of 72 illegal aliens (and more here). Make no mistake about this - these cartels are ruthlessly violent, and greedy. If you get in their way, they will eliminate you. And it's coming to the United States of America. Read the entire article (quote below). The 72 illegal aliens were bound and blindfolded. This was a massacre. No other word fits this act. How is this different from the mass graves found in Europe over the decades? In only one way. They didn't even bother to try to hide their murder.

Close the border! Stop the enticement of these people! Twenty thousand per year?? Leaving the border open enticing these people to try to get through Mexico is accessory to genocide!

SAN FERNANDO, Mexico - A car exploded early Friday in front of the offices of a major Mexican television station in a northern state where officials are investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants.

The Televisa network reported that the explosion damaged its building and knocked out its signal for several hours in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the drug gang-plagued state of Tamaulipas. It said none of its employees was hurt in the explosion, which was felt for several blocks.

Soldiers were blocking access to the building, Televisa said.

The network described the explosion as a car bomb, but city, state and federal officials could not immediately be reached to confirm that. The press office at the Defense Department said it had no information.

If confirmed, it would be the third car bomb in Mexico this year - a new and frightening tactic in the country's escalating drug war.

The first exploded July 5 in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing a federal police officer and two other people. The second, which caused no injuries, happened just two weeks ago in front of police headquarters in Ciudad Victoria.

Just north of Ciudad Victoria, heavily guarded investigators worked to identify 72 migrants massacred near the U.S. border, while human rights advocates demanded Mexico do more to stop the exploitation and abuse of migrants that they say led to the heinous crime.

Marines are protecting the pink, one-story funeral home where the bodies were taken after being discovered on a ranch Tuesday, bound, blindfolded and slumped against a wall.

Tamaulipas state Assistant Attorney General Jesus de la Garza said Thursday that 15 bodies had been identified: eight from Honduras, four from El Salvador, two from Guatemala and one from Brazil. Diplomats from several of those nations traveled to Mexico to help identify them, and Mexico's National Human Rights Commission sent investigators to monitor the process.

The government's chief security spokesman said the migrants were apparently slain because they refused to help a gang smuggle drugs.

"The information we have at this moment is that it was an attempt at forced recruitment," Alejandro Poire told W radio. "It wasn't a kidnapping with the intent to get money, but the intention was to hold these people, force them to participate in organized crime - with the terrible outcome that we know."

The victims of what could be Mexico's biggest drug-gang massacre were traversing some of the nation's most dangerous territory, trying to reach Texas. The lone survivor said the assassins identified themselves as Zetas, a drug gang that dominates parts of the northern state of Tamaulipas.

In San Fernando, a crumbling colonial town of about 30,000 on Mexico's Gulf coast, most people interviewed by The Associated Press were afraid to give their names.

A funeral home employee said the dead were stored in a refrigerated truck in the parking lot, where flies buzzed above white powder spread over bloodstains.

"This is frightening. It's horrible," said a tortilla stand worker in the crumbling colonial town of about 30,000 on Gulf coast.

"It smells like death. I vomited," his friend added.

Rights advocates warn that migrants are increasingly being kidnapped, killed and exploited by gangs as they travel through Mexico toward the United States, and they say Mexican authorities' indifference is letting the problem escalate.

"We disagree with the government that it is a consequence of battles between criminal groups," said the Rev. Pedro Pantoja, director of the Casa del Migrante in Saltillo in neighboring Coahuila state. "The permissiveness and complicity of the Mexican state with criminals ... is just as much to blame."

The National Human Rights Commission estimated in a report presented last year that nearly 20,000 migrants are kidnapped each year based on the number of reports it received between September 2008 and February 2009 - numbers the federal government disputes.

Mauricio Farah, who coordinated the report, said government corruption is at the heart of migrant abuse in Mexico.

"We are talking about the complicity of several authorities along the migrant route," Farah told MVS Radio on Thursday. "Forty, 80, 100 migrants inside trucks or on the trains can not pass unnoticed by the authorities ... on the contrary what happens is that they are in collusion with drug gangs."

Commission president Raul Plascencia said Thursday that authorities never responded to its recommendations or demands for greater security for migrants.

"This escalation of the violence ... demands results from the government in finding who is responsible," he said.

In an April report, Amnesty International called the plight of tens of thousands of mainly Central American migrants crossing Mexico for the U.S. a major human rights crisis.

The report said that although the government has made some small improvements, it continues to give the issue low priority, despite the widespread involvement of corrupt police.

Marines discovered the horrific massacre after the survivor, 18-year-old Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla of Ecuador, staggered wounded to a military checkpoint. He is now recovering from a gunshot to the neck at a hospital.

Lala's family told Ecuador television Thursday that he left his remote Andean town two months ago in hopes of reaching the U.S.

"I told him not to go, but he went," one of his brothers, Luis Alfredo Lala told Ecuavisa television from Lala's home town.

His wife back in Ecuador, Maria Angelica Lala, 17 years old and pregnant, told Teleamazonas her husband paid $15,000 for the smuggler who was supposed to guide him.

That smuggler apparently tried to hide Lala's fate from his family, calling Wednesday to tell her he had reached Los Angeles. That was the day after Mexican marines raided the ranch and found the slain migrants, 14 of them women.

Drug gangs in Mexico often force migrant smugglers to hand over their charges.

If confirmed as a cartel kidnapping, it would be the most extreme case seen so far and the bloodiest massacre since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on drug gangs in late 2006. More than 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence since then.

Calderon condemned the massacre as the work of desperate cartels.

They "are resorting to extortion and kidnappings of migrants for their financing and also for recruitment because they are having a hard time obtaining resources and people," he said in a statement Wednesday night.

Kidnappings and attacks on government security patrols are rampant in the highways surrounding San Fernando, where armed men claiming to belong to the Zetas roam freely and the police station is pockmarked with bullet holes from a March shooting. Last month, the bodies of 15 people were dumped in the middle of the highway from San Fernando to Matamoros, a city across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

The region is at the end of a traditional migration route for Central and South Americans who travel up the Gulf coast toward the U.S. border. Violence has soared there this year since the Zetas broke with their former allies, the Gulf cartel, sparking a vicious turf war.

Almost 20 migrants staying at a shelter outside Mexico City turned back to their countries after hearing of the killings this week, said employee Hector Lopez, a Nicaraguan who abandoned his own journey three months ago.

"I wanted to go reach the United States but when I saw what the situation was, what was happening to other migrants, I realized things could get worse for me," he said.

Others at the shelter were stunned by the massacre but undeterred - like 35-year-old Belizean Wilber Cuellar, who said he has been deported six times from the United States and once from Canada, where he worked at a chicken packing plant.

"I'm not afraid. I'm prepared to die," Cuellar said. "I'm tired of suffering in this world."

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Mexican officials are trying to say that the drug cartels are having a hard time in their drug business so they are branching out into human smuggling. I don't think that's it. Both drug smuggling and human smuggling are lucrative. I think they are just greedy ruthless evil people and they want to control all egress into the USA from our southern border. And they are succeeding at the moment.

MEXICO CITY — The bullet-pocked bodies of 72 people, believed to be migrants heading to the United States who resisted demands for money, have been found in a large room on a ranch in an area of northeast Mexico with surging violence, the authorities said Wednesday.

Initial reports after the victims were found Tuesday suggested that the mass of bodies was the largest of several dumping grounds, often with dozens of dead, discovered in recent months and attributed to the violence of the drug business.

But if the victims, found after a raid on a ranch in Tamaulipas State by Mexican naval units, are confirmed as migrants, their killings would provide a sharp reminder of the violence in human smuggling as well.

It was not clear if the victims, from Central and South America, were shot all at once. The police were relying on a harrowing but sketchy account from a wounded survivor, published by the newspaper Reforma and confirmed by government officials, who said several people were killed in short order after the migrants refused to pay or cooperate with the gunmen.

A law enforcement official said all were found in a large room, some sitting, some piled atop one another.

Alejandro Poiré, the government’s spokesman for security issues, said that though the investigation was just beginning, the killings seemed to be an outgrowth of pressure on drug gangs by a government crackdown.

“This act confirms that criminal organizations are looking to kidnapping and extortion because they are going through a difficult time obtaining resources and recruiting people willingly,” Mr. Poiré told reporters here.

United States law enforcement officials have warned that drug trafficking groups have increasingly moved into the lucrative business of human smuggling, extorting fees from migrants for safe passage across the border and sometimes forcing them to carry bundles of drugs. Smugglers are also known to rob, kidnap and sometimes kill migrants on both sides of the border.

The unidentified survivor, an Ecuadorean traveling with people from Ecuador, Brazil, Honduras and El Salvador, told investigators that the migrants had entered Mexico from the south and that they were making their way to Texas when they were confronted by the gunmen in San Fernando, about 100 miles south of Brownsville, Tex.

In a statement to the police, he said the leaders of the armed group had tried to extort fees from them and, when the migrants resisted, ordered their gunmen to open fire.

Wounded in the neck by the gunfire, the survivor heard screams and pleas for mercy. Once the men retreated, the witness said, he ran from the ranch where they were being held Monday and found a military checkpoint.

The military units reached the ranch on Tuesday and engaged in a firefight in which one marine and three suspects were killed. One Mexican, a minor, was taken into custody.

The authorities said 58 men and 14 women had been killed in the room by the gunmen. It was unclear how long they had been dead or detained.

The discovery of the bodies was the largest of at least three such finds this year. In May, 55 bodies were pulled from an abandoned mine south of Mexico City, and in July, 51 bodies were discovered in a field near Monterrey, an industrial and commercial hub in northeast Mexico that had been relatively quiet until this year.

A shootout last week in Monterrey outside the American School Foundation, a private school popular with American expatriates and Mexican business executives, prompted the United States Consulate to advise families to keep their children home pending an assessment of security at the school.

More than 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a crackdown on organized crime in 2006.

In a meeting with mayors on Wednesday, Mr. Calderón said, “We’re in the middle of a criminal spiral that we have to cut.”

“I don’t know of any crime that isn’t organized,” Mr. Calderón said. “They are all very organized, and much more than the police.”

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Remember that Deportations are down to 20% of what they were in 2008. Now, the Feds are attempting to just dismiss illegal immigration cases unless the criminal has commited serious crimes. It's Orwellian! Criminals, who entered the country illegally, can go free unless they kill one of us or something if they manage to avoid detection and stay in the country for 2 years. This is insane.

Critics assail the plan as a bid to create a kind of backdoor 'amnesty'

By SUSAN CARROLL

Copyright 2010, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Aug. 24, 2010, 9:00PM

The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.

Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients' deportations only to learn that the government was dismissing their cases.

Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said Tuesday that the review is part of the agency's broader, nationwide strategy to prioritize the deportations of illegal immigrants who pose a threat to national security and public safety. Rocha declined to provide further details.

Critics assailed the plan as another sign that the Obama administration is trying to create a kind of backdoor "amnesty" program.

Raed Gonzalez, an immigration attorney who was briefed on the effort by Homeland Security's deputy chief counsel in Houston, said DHS confirmed that it's reviewing cases nationwide, though not yet to the pace of the local office. He said the others are expected to follow suit soon.

Gonzalez, the liaison between the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the immigration court system, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said DHS now has five attorneys assigned full time to reviewing all active cases in Houston's immigration court.

Gonzalez said DHS attorneys are conducting the reviews on a case-by-case basis. However, he said they are following general guidelines that allow for the dismissal of cases for defendants who have been in the country for two or more years and have no felony convictions.

In some instances, defendants can have one misdemeanor conviction, but it cannot involve a DWI, family violence or sexual crime, Gonzalez said.

Massive backlog of cases

Opponents of illegal immigration were critical of the dismissals.

"They've made clear that they have no interest in enforcing immigration laws against people who are not convicted criminals," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict controls.

"This situation is just another side effect of President Obama's failure to deliver on his campaign promise to make immigration reform a priority in his first year," said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "Until he does, state and local authorities are left with no choice but to pick up the slack for prosecuting and detaining criminal aliens."

Gonzalez called the dismissals a necessary step in unclogging a massive backlog in the immigration court system. In June, there were more than 248,000 cases pending in immigration courts across the country, including about 23,000 in Texas, according to data compiled by researchers at Syracuse University.

'Absolutely fantastic'

Gonzalez said he went into immigration court downtown on Monday and was given a court date in October 2011 for one client. But, he said, the government's attorney requested the dismissal of that case and those of two more of his clients, and the cases were dispatched by the judge.

The court "was terminating all of the cases that came up," Gonzalez said. "It was absolutely fantastic."

"We're all calling each other saying, 'Can you believe this?' " said John Nechman, another Houston immigration attorney, who had two cases dismissed.

Attorney Elizabeth Mendoza Macias, who has practiced in Houston for 17 years, said she had cases for several clients dismissed during the past month and eventually called DHS to find out what was going on. She said she was told by a DHS trial attorney that 2,500 cases were under review in Houston.

"I had five (dismissed) in one week, and two more that I just received," Mendoza said. "And I am expecting many more, many more, in the next month."

Her clients, all previously charged with being in the country illegally, included:

An El Salvadoran man married to a U.S. citizen who has two U.S.-born children. The client had a pending asylum case in the court system, but the case was not particularly strong. Now that his case is terminated, he will be eligible to obtain permanent residency through his wife, Mendoza said.

A woman from Cameroon, who was in removal proceedings after being caught by the U.S. Border Patrol, had her case terminated by the government. She meets the criteria of a trafficking victim, Mendoza said, and can now apply for a visa.

Memo outlines priorities

Immigrants who have had their cases terminated are frequently left in limbo, immigration attorneys said, and are not granted any form of legal status.

"It's very, very key to understand that these aliens are not being granted anything in court. They are still here illegally. They don't have work permits. They don't have Social Security numbers," Mendoza said. "ICE is just saying, 'At this particular moment, we are not going to proceed with trying to remove you from the United States.' "

In a June 30 memo, ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton outlined the agency's priorities, saying it had the capacity to remove about 400,000 illegal immigrants annually — about 4 percent of the estimated illegal immigrant population in the country. The memo outlines priorities for the detention and removal system, putting criminals and threats to national security at the top of the list.

Up to 17,000 cases

On Tuesday, ICE officials provided a copy of a new policy memo from Morton dated Aug. 20 that instructs government attorneys to review the court cases of people with pending applications to adjust status based on their relation to a U.S. citizen. Morton estimates in the memo that the effort could affect up to 17,000 cases.

Tre Rebsock, the ICE union representative in Houston, said even if the efforts involve only a fraction of the pending immigration cases, "that's going to make our officers feel even more powerless to enforce the laws."

Open borders advocates have the blood of 72 more murdered people on their hands. That's right, if you fools wouldn't keep the border open, then people wouldn't be sneaking through Central and South America and getting murdered by barbarians. I hope you are proud of the end result of your eternal effort to draw more and more people through increasingly dangerous Mexico.

MEXICO CITY - A Mexican drug cartel massacred 72 Central and South American migrants within 100 miles of the U.S. border that they were trying to reach, according to an Ecuadorian survivor who escaped and stumbled wounded to a highway checkpoint where he alerted marines, official said Wednesday.

The marines fought the cartel gunmen at a ranch in the northern state of Tamaulipas on Tuesday, a battle that left one marine and three suspects dead. They found the bodies of 58 men and 14 women in a room, some piled on top of each other.

The Ecuadorian migrant told investigators that his captors identified themselves as members of the Zetas drug gang, said Vice Adm. Jose Luis Vergara, a spokesman for the Mexican Navy. Authorities believe the migrants were from Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil and Ecuador.

It is the biggest massacre to date in Mexico's drug war and the most horrifying example yet of the dangers faced by immigrants trying to get to the U.S.

"It's absolutely terrible and it demands the condemnation of all of our society," said Alejandro Poire, the government's security spokesman.

Authorities did not say why the gang killed the migrants. Mexico's drug cartels frequently kidnap migrants and threaten to kill them unless they pay fees for crossing their territory. Sometimes, gangs contact relatives of the migrants in the U.S. and demand they pay a ransom.

Arizonans have re-elected John McCain. Of the 25% of Republicans who voted, 56.2% voted for McCain. That's just great (NOT!). So, just as in the Presidential election, a very small number of people selected our nominee. Are you people stupid or just have no functioning memory cells? Those of you who voted for McCain, please go look up McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, Campaign Finance Reform, and look into what he was pushing in 2007 regarding Immigration Reform. Go find his statements denegrating Conservatives and those of us who want a "dang fence". But, under no circumstances will your complaints be tolerated when the geezer flips on immigration and supports amnesty AGAIN!

And the idiots at Fox News going on and on about Governor Brewer winning the nomination by a huge landslide - are they too stupid to know that the other candidates dropped out of the race? Do try to pay attention FNC. Don't get complacent and even more stupid like the other "news" sources.

Quayles son Ben won the nomination in AZ CD-3. I think this ad put him over the top. It was a really good ad. "Barack Obama is the worst President in history." "Somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell outta the place." All true statements. Not that I know whether he's the guy to do it or not.

Watch AZ CD-8 in November. Jesse Kelly won the Republican Nomination. Now he goes up against incumbent Gabrielle Giffords who has suddenly become a border hawk. Look at those numbers though. If all the Republicans vote for Jesse Kelly in the General election, he'll have 80188 votes over Gabby's 49097. Vote Jesse Kelly!